Sound / Racionais MCs

Sean Jacobs — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:57:00 +0000

Their song ‘Diario de um detento.’ Britian’s BBC4 is featuring a three-part documentary film series on the music and politics of Brazil. Racionais MCs, whose sounds and working class-down image is heavily influenced by West Coast gangsta rap, feature in the third, and final, episode.

Lucky Dube’s legacy

Sean Jacobs — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:20:00 +0000

Reggae musician Lucky Dube‘s tragic murder has ironically resulted in greater attention to his cultural and social significance inside South Africa (he had always had larger fame outside). More immediately, the event itself (he was killed in a failed carjacking incident while dropping off his children at his brother’s house outside Johannesburg) has raised questions about crime and class apartheid in postapartheid South Africa: Of all people Time magazine (their South Africa correspondent to be exact) wonders whether his death has shattered the public myth (widely subscribed to in some quarters) that violent crime in South Africa is ‘a black-on-white issue.’

Africa is a Country » inequality

Sound / Racionais MCs

Lucky Dube’s legacy